


another head aches, another heart breaks

by hollow_city



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Arguing, Bruce Wayne is a Good Dad, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Breakdown, Sleep Deprivation, Stress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-14 15:43:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11786280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollow_city/pseuds/hollow_city
Summary: "i'm tired of fixing things that'll just break!"one hundred and four hours, twelve minutes, and twenty-six seconds. this is how long he has gone without sleep. thirty-four hours, forty minutes, and ten seconds. this is how long he has gone without food. these two things are not the direct cause of but are connected to what comes after.





	another head aches, another heart breaks

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sad. can you tell? this entire thing was inspired by this line: "i'm tired of fixing things that always break!" spoken by felix wolfe in the incredible book wolf by wolf. the line works its way in there... in a sense. title is from all of these things that i've done by the killers.

Tim's head hurts. That's all he's thinking right now. That something is shredding through his brain and pounding on the inside of his skull.

He can't figure out why he feels like this. He can't remember what he did yesterday, but maybe this pain has something to do with that. He can't remember a lot of things lately, so this doesn't worry him.

What he had for breakfast, the shirt he wore yesterday, where he left his laptop. All of these things are slowly slipping away from him and he doesn't know why, but it's been such a gradual process that he doesn't think it to be an issue. He'll figure it out eventually, and it’ll all be fine. 

Besides, who cares about any of that. He's busy right now.

"I need you to get whatever you can from this," Bruce is saying. It sounds like a thick pane of glass is positioned between them, but there mustn't be because a tablet is placed on the table in front of him. Tim remembers that you can't reach through glass without breaking it.  

Bruce watches him for a second, and it takes Tim a moment to realize this. When he does, his lips stretch and his eyes squint slightly. Bruce buys it and leaves Tim's small range of vision. 

His eyes move sluggishly, burning like he hasn't blinked in far too long (has he? he can't remember.) as he examines the tablet. A deep crack spiders out from the corner, stretching across the blank screen. It would be clearly salvageable if it weren't for the large dents in the silver backing. He doesn't even have to consider before he pops the screen off. His fingers clench around the edge of the tablet when his gaze falls on the mangled wires and circuit boards. 

He can't fix this. Babs couldn't fix this. The person who invented this tablet couldn't fix this.

Tim tries anyway, because Bruce asked him to, and he doesn't want to let him down. He does that too much. 

(He remembers  _that_.)

He sifts his way through the delicate wires, disconnecting, reconnecting, reconstructing, movements that feel more like an impulse rather than a well thought out plan. Just as his brain lands on  _this was in vain, it isn't working_ , something sparks, and he blinks. 

It takes him a moment to secure the shattered screen and waits patiently while it glows into life. The power button sticks in place but he ignores it in favor of getting through the lock. Just as he's about to plug it into his laptop, the picture flickers between the lock screen and stripes of harsh color. Tim's eyes squint angrily and he watches as it burns out. 

No one could've fixed it. Tim should've been able to.

The blurriness of his gaze might be the fact that he hasn't gotten a wink of sleep in days or it might be the tears building in his eyes. He can't tell. 

But he still shoots to his feet and swipes his arm across the entire table, sending both his laptop and the demolished tablet to the concrete floor. They shatter upon impact and the hazy conversations all around him cease. It's an icy kind of silence that makes him hyper-aware of his own presence. 

"Timmy?" someone calls out. It takes him a moment to identify Dick's voice. He sounds worried.

He turns to face his older brother and finds him standing beside both Damian and Jason. Bruce has spun around the computer chair and has his eyes on him. They all look confused. 

"Tim? What's wrong?" Bruce asks, and Tim wants to scream. He wants to yell and he wants to break more useless things. 

He settles for this: "I'm tired of fixings things that'll just break!" 

His voice breaks and it sounds almost like a scream, but his throat tightens painfully on the last word, and he chokes. His hands tear at his hair until he feels like it won't hold anymore; until the pain he feels on the outside distracts him from the pain he feels on the inside. 

"Tim," Bruce says his name quietly as he approaches. 

Tim takes a step back and finds himself pressed against the table, and everything clears up when he feels the hard edges press into his thighs. The hazy blackness around the edges of his vision fades away and the filter over his ears lets up, and he realizes what he's done.

He destroyed evidence, he yelled at them, and he let them see what's actually going on inside his silent, stoic head. His eyes flick around, back and forth over the tight faces of his brothers and his father. This isn't right. This shouldn't have happened.

(He shouldn't have let this happen.)

"Tim," Bruce repeats his name like it's supposed to be important. "When was the last time you slept?"

He speaks slowly and it makes Tim feel like a cornered animal who can't bolt fast enough. He doesn't like talking about this.

"Yesterday," he replies because wasn't it yesterday? He can't remember. It was probably yesterday. So that's what he says. "Yeah. Yesterday. A couple hours."

Nobody looks convinced, and something in his stomach curls tighter. This isn't how it's supposed to go. They're supposed to dump their problems on him, he's supposed to fix them, and then he can move on to the next thing. There is no  _after_. That's how it's always been. Always will be. 

"Tim," Jason says from his spot across the Cave. He says his name like it's unfamiliar because it is. He doesn't usually call anybody around here by their actual names, especially not Tim. He hates Tim. Tim doesn't deserve that kind of respect.

"What," Tim murmurs, his voice unnaturally flat. He's like that a lot. _Unnaturally [insert annoying trait]_. 

"You look like a corpse that got up and started walking around," he tells him. "How long has it  _actually_ been?" 

Tim shrugs. "I slept just fine yesterday. Want me to repeat it again?"

He gets an utterly unimpressed look for his efforts. He takes a moment to steel himself and his face falls back into the blank mask he normally wears. With a sigh, he gingerly lifts the broken tablet from the floor and holds it out to Bruce. 

"You can probably see I haven't done anything that wasn't already there. It's broken. I can't get anything from it," he says, vehemently ignoring the pulling feeling in his stomach and the burning in his eyes. He's  _fine._

Bruce takes it with a frown, his eyes flicking to someone behind Tim and then back. "Hnn. You need to sleep, Tim. When was the last time you ate?"

Tim doesn't remember, but he doesn't think they need to know that, so he says, "I skipped dinner. I'll eat something before we go out if it makes you feel better." He carefully keeps the annoyance from his tone. 

Bruce nods in response, watching with narrowed eyes as Tim turns on his heel and heads for the elevator. He knows his shoulders are stiffer than usual and his steps aren't consistent, but he doesn't care. He wants to get out of here before their gazes burn holes straight through him. 

When he makes it to the kitchen, he finds it empty. Good. That means he won't have to explain to Alfred what he's doing there, and he won't be forced to eat something. Instead of making himself an actual dinner (when was the last time he had one of those? he can't remember.), he grabs an apple and only takes a few bites from it. He considers getting something else, but then halfway to the cupboard, he forgets what he's going there for, and heads for the Cave once more.

When he makes it down there, everybody stops what they're doing and looks at him. He pauses, too, and takes in the sight, having to blink several times to bring everything into focus. Jason is leaning against his motorcycle, Damian is halfway through putting on his mask, Dick is stretching, and Bruce is just pulling on the cowl.

Everything seems to be frozen, and it immediately makes Tim uncomfortable. Is there something on his face? Did he forget something? He's been doing that a lot lately. He doesn't mean to. It's not like it matters, anyway. 

"What?" he finally says, moving from his spot to get to his suit. Nobody says anything until he has most of it on, and then Dick is walking towards him to put a hand on his shoulder. Tim knows a lecture or some kind of advice is coming because he's classified that move as the Big Brother is Here move. 

"Tim... maybe you should stay home tonight," Dick tells him, a wrinkle between his eyebrows and a frown pulling at his lips. "You don't look too good."

Tim shrugs his hand off and snorts quietly. "I'm okay. Let's go."

He doesn't say  _fine_ because maybe he's not, but he's  _okay._ He's always okay. He has to be.

Dick doesn't look too convinced and glances over his shoulder at Bruce, who doesn't say anything at all. After another moment, he sighs and moves to join Jason. Tim watches as he goes before leaning over to pull on his boots. It takes him a moment and unconsciously leaning against the wall to stay upright, but when he finally does, he straightens up far too fast. 

His vision grows black for a second and he has to use every muscle he can access to keep himself standing. When his vision clears, nobody seems to have noticed his plight, so he ignores it and heads for his motorcycle. 

"You sure you're okay to go out tonight, Babybird?" Jason asks, and Tim thinks he sounds a little worried, but that can't be. Jason doesn't care about him like that. It's probably just the voice scrambler in the hood messing with his mind.

"Yes," Tim says, the tiniest bit of his impatience slipping through, as he throws one leg over his motorcycle. "I'm okay."

Of course he is.

 

-

 

He is not okay. 

He should not have come out tonight, he knows that now. But he can't be the family disappointment again. He does that too much. 

Tonight is one of the few nights that they all go out together, because Jason was feeling particularly  _okay_ today, and Tim just knew he couldn't miss out on that. Besides, it makes Bruce happy, to have them all together like that. And who is he to take that away from him?

And it's not like Tim has anything else he'd rather be doing. Except maybe lying down in his bathtub and waiting for these waves of nausea to pass him by so he can get up without stumbling again. Right now, though, he's balancing on the top of a very tall building, and he can't do either of those things, so he just has to remain in his crouch and clutch the ledge with white-knuckled fingers. 

He doesn't think he has to worry about somebody seeing him because he's almost positive they'd decided to split up, but if he's honest, he can't remember. He can't remember if Bruce went with Dick or if Damian went with Jason or if he was supposed to be meeting up with somebody, because his brain is just a whirlwind of exhaustion and stress. 

Tim abruptly shoots to his feet, digging the heels of his hands into his temples in a feeble attempt to halt the throbbing and spinning. He knows he should probably head back to the cave, but he can't, because somebody's voice is yelling in his ear, and that's more important. The voice stabs at his eardrums like knives and he winces. 

"-ed Robin!" a voice that sounds a little like Jason's calls out, followed by an address and a request for backup. 

Tim tries, he really does, to get to Jason in time. He pulls out his grapple gun and aims it for what looks like the right spot, but then he's falling, and maybe it wasn't the right spot. 

The ground rushes towards him and the grapple gun slips from his fingers, despite his attempts to keep it within reach. His eyes are drifting shut and he really just wants to continue falling, because it feels nice, and he can sleep like this. But then he remembers what happens when you fall, and his brain snaps out of its haze. His body jerks like he's been electrocuted and air rushes into his lungs with a sharp gasp. 

Moments before he should have become a pancake on the sidewalk, he crashes into something else, and he's suddenly flying sideways. Something is wrapped around him, around his chest and underneath his arms, but he doesn't have the energy to open his eyes and find out who it is.

Voices and sounds flicker in and out before it all falls blissfully silent, and Tim succumbs to the first sleep he's had in days. 

 

-

 

When his eyes open again, he's panicking. He doesn't know where he is, he doesn't know what day it is, and it's  _really_ bright. 

"Tim, it's alright, Tim!" someone is reassuring him, and a hand presses against his chest when he tries to sit up. 

After a moment of furious blinking and squinting, his vision clears for the most part and he's able to see Bruce standing above him. He's lying in the Cave, completely stripped of his gear. His eyes flick around frantically, trying to put the pieces of the past day back together.

"What happened?" he croaks, wincing at the sound of his own voice. He tries to sit up again, but Bruce only pushes down on his chest once more. He gives in and collapses back into the pillows.

"You went out, fully aware that you were in no shape to, and nearly fell to your death," Bruce grits out, and Tim wants to shy away from the burning anger in the older man's eyes. "You most likely would not have survived a fall from that height, Tim." 

Tim doesn't say anything for a moment, his throat tight and his hands clenched into fists. He doesn't know  _what_ to say.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Bruce asks after a minute of silence. It's then that Tim realizes, he isn't  _angry_ , he's  _scared_. 

"Because there wasn't anything wrong," Tim still says, because wasn't he fine? He was supposed to be okay. 

"No, Tim, there was, and I didn't realize. I'm sorry," he replies, looking far more emotional than Bruce Wayne ever is, and Tim doesn't like it too much. Even if it's only the tightness around his eyes and the saddened frown on his face, it's still too much.

Tim clears his throat and averts his eyes. "There's nothing to be sorry about."

Suddenly, arms are looping around his back and pulling him up from the bed and he jerks at the sudden contact, his eyes widening. It takes a few moments for it to occur to him that this is a  _hug_.

He can't remember the last time he got one of those. From anyone. 

"I'm  _sorry_ ," Bruce says, almost sternly, tightening his grip. 

After a few moments of wide-eyed staring at the Cave wall, Tim slowly lifts his arms to tighten them around Bruce's shoulders. It's awkward for just a moment before his eyes squeeze shut, and he holds on tighter, and he takes a shuddering breath.

Okay. 

Maybe he's not  _okay_ _._

But maybe; maybe he will be. 


End file.
